Star Wars: The Old Republic Guide – Tanking With Sith Juggernaut to 30
- January 5th, 2012
- By MogKnight
Get ready to micromanage your companions as you build your crew skills
I’m the Juggernaut Bitch!
Sith Juggernaut is a heavy armor class that is backed up its superior defense. Focusing on defensive abilities and using one lightsaber with a focus or shield offhand (because double anything is very hipster), the raw deal with Juggernaut is to control the situation while staying alive to tell the tale.
Once you’re absolutely sure, accept your Juggernaut class and spend your first talent point. For Immortal, you have the options of:
- Battle Cry: Free Scream after a Force Charge
- Enraged Sunder: Sundering Assault (which you learn at level 10) generates one extra rage
- Quake: Smash will lower target’s accuracy by 5%
I suggest maxing out Battle Cry first and then Enraged Sunder. Now you will be using Enraged Sunder to replace Assault when it’s up and you will be using Scream after every Charge. Note that Saber Ward also gives you double defense bonus for 2 seconds upon activation due to Blade Twisting, a passive trait given to Juggy. Dromund Kaas is pretty straight forward so leveling from 10 to 16ish should not be a problem but now you have options besides quest grinding.
2OP4PVP
PvPing as an Immortal Jugg is not going to be as amazing you may hope it to be if you intend on taking a front position. While later on it proves to be a much more viable option to make a hybrid spec, right now you just want to kill a few guys and get some XP. At this point of the game at lower levels, it’s best to maintain a defensive position. Your stats are scaled in Warzones so that you will be on par with everyone else but you will be lacking abilities. Warzones can be enabled by going to the bottom right corner of the screen and clicking on the PvP icon. Queue up and be placed in one of three Warzones.
Huttball
The rules of huttball is much like neutral bomb in any FPS game. Grab the ball and charge it into the enemy’s goal line. You can also throw the ball but you must throw it at someone or it will reset if it touches the floor. First to score 6 or highest points after time expires will win.
As a Jugg, you want to use your tanking abilities to protect the ball carrier or become the ball carrier yourself. Using Taunt (level 16) and Guard (level 14) in PvP will let you reduce the damage off of the ball carrier. Chilling Scream (level 12) will also slow everyone down to 50% movement speed. Combine the two together to become a huge asset to the team. Another strategy is to throw yourself in and use your body as a distraction. If 6 people are targeting you, that means 6 people are ignoring the ball carrier.
You also get a “Throw Huttball” ability. Since there’s a lot of zig zagging around, use this to give it to someone who is closer to the goal. If you’re about to die, pass it to someone to avoid the enemy from taking it. Make sure that Throw ability is easily accessible to a keybind as you will be unable to throw the ball while stunned. You also must specify where you want to throw the ball on the area.
Battle of Alderaan
Yes, you’re fighting on a planet that’s going to become space vapor in a few thousand years. Regardless, the goal of this game is territories, much like WoW’s Arathi Basin. There are three turrets that you need to take over and a “resource” that goes down as the enemy takes control of a turret. Whoever hits 0 first will lose. Your goal as a Juggy is to prevent people from taking a spot over and defending it with your life. Defending a point (which can be as easy as standing still at a spot) will reward you a lot of medals in the end and thus more XP. You can cancel the process of claiming a turret by simply hitting the opponent. Charge in epic-like to freak the enemy out and hope that reinforcements will come to assist you.
No, charging in epic-like won’t always work… But at least you look cool doing it.
Voidstar
Much like your standard Assault gametype in other games, Voidstar is your attack/defense race against time. The goal is to bomb the doors so you can go through and get to the datalink to clock in your time. Your goal as Juggy is to stop the bomb planting from ever occurring. You can also harass people trying to defend to try to distract them from other people placing bombs. When you learn Force Push, you can use it to push enemies off of the bridge after the first door or give you enough room to Charge and get your free Force Scream. Finally, offense still requires some defense as once a bomb is armed, an enemy can deactivate it and the deactivation prep is much faster than the arming. Stay on that bomb and hit whoever tries to slip in.
FLASH… AHH AHH!
Flashpoints are instanced zones that feature multiple bosses and some good gear! These are equivalent to the World of Warcraft’s dungeons but are slightly more difficult when compared to them. Black Talon, thankfully, isn’t going to scare you away since classes aren’t fully developed yet and The Black Talon was made for two players in mind. Grab a partner and run it at least once. Later on you’ll be able to take part in Hammer Station and that will be the first instance that will require more than just murdering everything in sight recklessly. By the time you do Hammer Station, however, you should have access to most of your tank abilities and I would recommend stepping in at level 18.
I wouldn’t spend too much time in these but I would recommend at least running one Flashpoint once a day just so you can get the hang of tanking. Also do yourself a huge favor and look up videos on YouTube or read a guide or so about how to handle some of these Flashpoints. Again, they do require a bit of skill and knowledge to handle and despite most of them being fairly simple fights, some of the boss battles will need a bit of explaining.
Do a Barrel Roll!
While not immediately available at level 10, completing Dromund Kaas will give you access to your own ship. The ship acts as your private headquarters but it is also battle ready and can be used in space missions. A space mission plays out much like a on-rails shooter like Star Fox where you fly on a set path and can only move your ship along the X-Y axis. You can shoot pew pew lasers or lock onto enemies and fire missiles. These missions typically are as long as a Star Fox level (about 3-4 minutes) and can net you good XP if you just don’t feel like walking around and killing random enemies all day. Your ship can also be upgraded and I recommend stopping by a ship upgrade vendor to grab some level 1 ship equipment. You really do not want to go into a space mission with less than 40 missiles and I believe you start off with 12 by default. Screw that!
